Line style
The expression line style in verse designates the regular correspondence of the sending with the end of a sentence , part of a sentence or syntagma . With the strict line style , each verse must form a complete sentence, with the free line style this is not required. The correspondence between sentence or colon and verse results in the tendency to paratax and relatively short sentences in the line style .
The opposite of the line style is the hook style , in which syntactic units extend over several verses or the sending lies within a syntactic unit, which is called enjambement .
Originally the term in the old German verse theory referred to the correspondence of long line and sentence or larger syntactic incision, in such a way that units of meaning usually do not extend beyond the long line pair. Line style appears in individual sections of Hildebrandlied and Muspilli .
In recent German poetry, the line style or an approximation of it is a typical feature of the folk song or the folksong-like naive tone of some poems, especially from the 19th century.
A strict line style appears in modern poetry with Arno Holz ( Phantasus ) and with the poets of Expressionism ( Theodor Däubler , August Stramm , Georg Heym , Georg Trakl , Alfred Lichtenstein , Albert Ehrenstein , Johannes R. Becher , Kurt Heynicke ) and constitutes there a special tone, for which Clemens Heselhaus coined the term line composition .
Examples
The following examples show the different strengths of the line style:
The first stanza from Friedrich Schiller's poem Das Mädchen aus der Fremde (1796) consists of a main clause into which a subordinate clause is inserted ( hypotax ).
In a valley with poor shepherds
Appeared with every young year,
As soon as the first larks buzzed,
A girl, beautiful and wonderful.
Since the predicate ("appeared") appears in the second verse, but the subject ("a girl") only in the fourth verse, a tension arises. Since the sending always coincides with the end of a part of a sentence, but the sentence as a whole extends over all four verses, here is an example of the free line style.
The second stanza of the same poem offers an alternation of main and subordinate clauses, so the style is hypotactic without being intricate. So you can pause at the end of each line, but read the stanza fluently overall. This is a typical example of the line style.
No one knew where she came from,
she was not born in the valley,
and her trace was quickly lost as
soon as the girl said goodbye.
The style of the following poem, according to Heinrich Heine “a real folk song that I heard on the Rhine”, is strictly Paratakian . It only contains main clauses that end at the end of each line. The impression of the uniform sequence is reinforced by the fact that the sentence structure is almost always the same. So this is an example of the strict line style.
A
hoar frost fell in the spring night,
it fell on the delicate blue flowers, they are withered, withered.
A young man loved a girl,
they secretly fled from home,
neither father nor mother knew.
They wandered back and forth,
they were neither lucky nor starred,
they died, spoiled.
Far from the folk song is the strict line style in the famous poem end of the world by Jacob van Hoddis to produce an impression of incoherence and decaying context:
The citizen's hat flies from the pointed head,
In all the air it echoes like screams,
roofers fall and go in two
And on the coasts - one reads - the tide rises.
About the same time and with a similar use of the line style, the poem Die Welt by Alfred Lichtenstein :
Many days stamping over human
animals, Hunger sharks fly in soft seas.
Heads and beers glitter in coffee houses.
Girls screams tear apart on a man.
literature
- Dieter Burdorf, Christoph Fasbender, Burkhard Moennighoff (Hrsg.): Metzler Lexicon literature. Terms and definitions. 3. Edition. Metzler, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-476-01612-6 , p. 839.
- Otto Knörrich: Lexicon of lyrical forms (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 479). 2nd, revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-520-47902-8 , p. 264.
- Gero von Wilpert : Subject dictionary of literature. 8th edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-520-84601-3 , p. 915 f.
Individual evidence
- ^ Clemens Heselhaus: German modern poetry from Nietzsche to Yvan Goll: the return to the imagery of language. 2., through Edition Bagel, Düsseldorf 1962, p. 167.
- ↑ Friedrich Schiller: The girl from abroad . In: Friedrich Schiller: Complete Works. Volume 1, 3rd edition Munich 1962, p. 406.
- ↑ Heinrich Heine: A frost fell on the spring night . In: (ders.): Works and letters in ten volumes. Volume 1, Berlin and Weimar 2nd ed. 1972, p. 279.
- ^ Alfred Lichtenstein: The world . V. 1-4. In: (ders.): Collected poems. Zurich 1962, p. 61.